'Those who don’t support Raila viewed as enemies of BBI'

The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) was initially heralded as a tool for unity but after a series of rallies countrywide, with the latest in Meru Saturday, new fault lines have emerged.

Land, executive power structure, succession politics as well as issues on devolution have emerged as the thorny topics in the initiative that also has a parallel formal process of receiving views. BBI that was created after the March 2018 “handshake” between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has received lukewarm support from deputy president William Ruto’s camp.

Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen and other allies of the DP, walked out of the Meru meeting, signalling the deepening divisions.

The intended expansion of the executive coupled with 2022 succession politics have seen Mr Odinga craft a movement out of the BBI rallies that could give him momentum ahead of the next elections. With the absence of Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, Mr Odinga has remained the focal point of the BBI rallies.

In Kisii, Kakamega, Mombasa, Kitui, Narok and Meru, Mr Odinga continues to hog the limelight.

 Even though some of the ideas suggested by various regions may not make it to the final BBI report, Mr Odinga could always promise to implement them in a future administration.

Mr Ruto appears to have realised this and has been castigating the meetings as ODM campaign platforms.

Mr Odinga is essentially positioning himself as a selfless national leader and has been getting accolades from every region he visits.

Any leader who doesn’t support Mr Odinga is viewed as an enemy of BBI.

It’s a quandary captured aptly by Narc Kenya leader Martha Karua who rubbished the manner in which the ongoing BBI rallies have been organised, saying they had become exclusive, and were being used to spread hate.

“The BBI public rallies so far have given the impression that unless one supports wholesale the BBI, they are not welcome and are considered enemies. The recent Narok rally (last weekend) took ethnic intolerance a notch higher and it worries that the BBI drivers present at the rally did not seek to set the record straight right there. This is not only unhealthy, but also suggests that they were at peace with those divisive and unconstitutional remarks,” she said.

“It is every individual’s right to be part of the process irrespective of whether you support the process. We must as Kenyans refuse to be blindfolded and bulldozed into supporting what we do not know about, or to be excluded from debating or participating in matters that affect us.”

 Even as this happens, the Mt Kenya clarion call of one man, one vote, one shilling as opposed to one man, one kilometre, one shilling as called for by sparsely populated regions will be a hot potato as the BBI process winds down.

 The issue of devolved funds has made Central leaders jittery as they believe they do not get money commensurate to the population in their region and a BBI report that does not capture their aspirations will prove a hard sell. There is also the question of whether or not to create regional governments.

Elsewhere, Coast and Maasai leaders are already pushing for territorial land ownership for host communities.

Last weekend, Narok Senator Ledama Ole Kina brought up the issue of historical land injustices affecting his Maasai community. The matter has sharply divided discussions involving the BBI process.

In their presentation to the BBI Task Force, the Maasai recommend a return of 220,000 acres of land in Magadi ward back to the community and revert the ownership of Amboseli National Park to the County Government.

The huge chunk of land is part of the leased land by soda ash miner Tata Magadi Chemicals Ltd which extracts soda ash from Lake Magadi and which the community is unable to utilise.

The community wants the BBI team to acknowledge the continued ownership of Amboseli National Park by Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) a historical injustice and allow the County Government of Kajiado to levy taxes and earn income and in turn offer them services like it is happening between Maasai Mara Game Reserve and Narok County Government.

A memorandum presented by the community to the BBI task force through Governor Joseph ole Lenku, the BBI coordinator for the Maa nation, cites the twin matters as the most apt examples of how the Maasai community has suffered historical injustices from the independence government and multinationals.

The petition was floated in a series of inter-county consultative meetings by elected and opinion leaders from Narok, Kajiado and Samburu counties and was adopted during a BBI delegates conference at Maasai Mara University on February 21, a day before the Narok BBI rally last weekend.

The Tata Magadi, in particular, irks the Maasai because a lease drafted more than 100 years alienates an entire pastoralist community from the use of the land, when the company only utilises 5,000 acres for its mining purposes.

“An entire community cannot engage in meaningful economic activity because a multinational has all its land in its armpit. The billions that accrue from the mining activities do not come back to the society. It has led to a cycle of grinding poverty with hundreds of children unable to attend school because their parents cannot afford it,” says Governor Lenku

Mr Lenku said that the Tata Magadi Ltd injustice is worsened by the refusal of the company to remit its land rates amounting to Sh17 billion, a matter that has been subject to litigation by the county government.

Last year, the company lost round one of the dispute after former Kajiado High Court judge Reuben Nyakundi referred the dispute to the Ministry of Mining for arbitration.

 In documents seen by Sunday Nation, the company ignored arbitration meetings held at the ministry headquarters and instead filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal. The ministry had done a survey and proposed that a section of the vast land that is not under the mining activity be slapped with the land rates payable to the county government.

Mr Musalia Mudavadi and his Amani National Congress (ANC) also want the issue of historical land injustices addressed.

The party wants the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal /Irregular Allocation of Public Land (famously known as the Ndung’u Land Commission) fully implemented.

The same sentiment is also shared by the Pastoralist Parliamentary Group (PPG) and The National Youth BI) task force in their memorandum to the BBI Task Force.

Additional reporting by Nyambega Gisesa and Patrick Lang’at